Arp's Anomalies

by

Bert Thompson, Ph.D.Brad Harrub, Ph.D.

astrophysicist
Halton C. Arp

Halton Arp is an astrophysicist at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Munich, Germany. He has been referred to by some of his colleagues as “the most feared astronomer on Earth” (see Kaufmann, 1981). Renowned physicist John Gribbin once wrote that “for 20 years or so” Arp has been “a thorn in the side of establishment astronomy” (1987, p. 65). Depictions such as these generally are not seen in scientific literature. What, pray tell, has Dr. Arp done to deserve such designations?

For more than three decades, Arp has compiled—through extensive observational astronomy using some of the world’s finest telescopes—a sizable database of “peculiar” galaxies and redshift “anomalies.” These peculiarities and anomalies hardly are insignificant or few in number. Quite the opposite—Dr. Arp has produced an entire “Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies” (currently administered by the California Institute of Technology—see Arp, 1966). The images that he has produced, and the implications stemming from them, have struck at the very heart of current cosmological theory.

By way of summary, Arp has discovered entities (e.g., galaxies) that exhibit one redshift value (designated as “z” in the scientific literature) that are physically associated with other entities (e.g., quasars) with entirely different redshift values. As Gribbin wryly noted: “If a galaxy and a quasar are physically connected, but have different redshifts, something definitely is wrong.... Arp has enough evidence that he ought to be worrying more people than actually acknowledge the significance of his findings” (p. 65, emp. added).

In a personal e-mail to us on April 17, 2003, Dr. Arp referred us to what he called “the latest, very powerful evidence found in the active galaxy NGC 7603 (Arp Atlas No. 92). The high-redshift companion is attached to the arm from the active galaxy which contains two very high redshift, quasar-like objects” (see images below). It was this very enigma that two Spanish astronomers discussed in a 2002 paper in Astronomy and Astrophysics, in which they stated: “As far as we are aware, this is the most impressive case of a system of anomalous redshifts discovered so far” (see López-Corredoira and Gutiérrez, 2002, p. L15). Let us explain.

In figure A below, there are four objects. NGC 7603 is a spiral galaxy with a redshift value of 0.029. Object 1 is a quasar with z = 0.057. Objects 2 and 3 are quasar-like objects with z values of 0.243 and 0.391 respectively. As López-Corredoira and Gutiérrez noted: “Everything points to the four objects being connected among themselves, but how to explain the different redshifts?” (p. L17). How to explain indeed? Gribbin lamented: “That strikes at the foundation stone of received cosmological wisdom” (p. 65). It certainly does! As Dr. Arp himself put it in an e-mail to us on March 27, 2003, this is a case where “we once again are experiencing a situation where data get thrown out if they don’t fit the theory.” Big Bang cosmology simply cannot explain “Arp’s anomalies.”

We are happy to grant permission for items in the "Creation Vs. Evolution" section to be reproduced in their entirety, as long as the following stipulations are observed: (1) Apologetics Press must be designated as the original publisher; (2) the specific Apologetics Press Web site URL must be noted; (3) the author’s name must remain attached to the materials; (4) any references, footnotes, or endnotes that accompany the article must be included with any written reproduction of the article; (5) alterations of any kind are strictly forbidden (e.g., photographs, charts, graphics, quotations, etc. must be reproduced exactly as they appear in the original); (6) serialization of written material (e.g., running an article in several parts) is permitted, as long as the whole of the material is made available, without editing, in a reasonable length of time; (7) articles, in whole or in part, may not be offered for sale or included in items offered for sale; and (8) articles may be reproduced in electronic form for posting on Web sites pending they are not edited or altered from their original content and that credit is given to Apologetics Press, including the web location from which the articles were taken.